A Rhetorical Analysis Of Known By God

In the article “Known by God: C. S. Lewis and Dietrich Bonhoeffer,” Brian S. Rosner opens by acknowledging that God knows everything, but then he asserts that being known by God is different. He asserts that being known by God is to be in relation with God or to belong to God. He uses the writings of Lewis and Bonhoeffer to make his claims, and the Bible to substantiate them. He uses what Lewis wrote to explain that we God knows us better than we could know him and what Bonhoeffer wrote to explain that God knows us better than we know ourselves. Rosner uses a piece of dialog from Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, The Voyage of the Dawntreader to make his claim. This dialog is between the characters Edmund and Eustace. “‘But who is Aslan?

He uses the passages of Galatians 4:8-9, 1 Corinthians 13:12, Hosea 13:4-5, and 1 Corinthians 8:1-3 as examples of this. Rosner explains that in Galatians 4:8-9, Paul is putting emphasis on God’s knowledge of them, not their knowledge of God and that Edmund is putting emphasis on Aslan’s knowledge of him. In 1 Corinthians 13:12, Rosner comments on how Paul compares our knowledge to God’s knowledge. In Hosea 13:4-5, he explains the prophet is using the knowledge of God in a subjective form. In 1 Corinthians 8:1-3, he explains that loving God does not give knowledge of God. Instead, it lets us be known by God. He concludes this section by stating “Gods knows us better we than we know him”

He does this using Bonhoeffer’s poem “Who am I?” Bonhoeffer writes this poem from prison, and the poem reflects this. Rosner comments on the structure and each section of the poem. The first three stanzas are of Bonhoeffer from the guards’ perspective, the fourth stanza is how Bonhoeffer views himself, and the fifth is him questioning himself, but ends with him answering his question. Rosner notes that Bonhoeffer had raised questions of self in his other works, and in his letters, Bonhoeffer had written, “One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself . . . [instead] we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God” (qtd. in Rosner 349). Rosner explains how that being known by God can be comforting. He quotes Nahum 1:7, “The LORD is good, a stronghold, in the day of trouble; he knows (yada) those who take refuge in him” (qtd. in Rosner 350), as an example of the comfort of being known by God. Rosner claims that Bonhoeffer asserts that being known by God is to belong to God. He gathers this assertion from the ending of Bonhoeffer’s poem: “you know me, I am yours” (qtd. in Rosner 349). He uses the 2 Timothy to help in his assertion that God knowing you means you belong to him. He reasons using Psalms 139, which is about God searching us and knowing us, that to be known by God is a relational knowing. He then explains that when God looks upon us, he knows we are Christians,